These (Ovis montana) sheep are of a grey or leaden colour; the rump and the inner side of the legs are white; the hoofs black, about one inch long.  “The hair is rather soft, and at the roots is mixed with exceedingly fine white wool, which seems to grow only in certain patches.  The neck is relatively much thicker than that of other animals of the same size; the legs and hoofs are also strongly built, like the neck.”  The horns of the female are comparatively small, flat, and have only a small bend backward; they are of a dirty-yellowish white, marked with closely connected annulations to the very tip.  The legs are brown, as are also the ends of the hairs about the neck; the hoofs are black.  “A ewe will weigh about 100 lb. when in full flesh, with only the entrails taken out.  The head bears every resemblance to that of our European sheep.”  The colour of the males is nearly the same as that of the females, only rather browner; they are much larger and more strongly built, with a pair of enormous horns, which incline backward.  As they grow they bend downward, and in the course of time form a complete curve and project forward.  At the root the horns are nearly three inches square, the flat sides opposite; they are marked with closely connected ridges and end in a tapering flat point.

When the horns grow to a great length, forming a complete curve, the tips project on both sides of the head so as to prevent the ram from feeding.  This, with their great weight, causes the sheep to dwindle to a mere skeleton and die.  The bighorn sheep feed much in the caverns of the Rocky Mountains, eating a kind of moss and grass growing on the floors of these caves, and also a peculiar soft, sweet-tasting “clay”, of which the natives also are fond.

The southern part of British Columbia contains the mule deer of western North America (Mazama macrotis), and a very strange rodent, the sewellel or mountain beaver (Haplodon), a creature distantly allied to squirrels, marmots, and beavers, but restricted in its distribution to a few parts of California, Oregon, and British Columbia.  Amongst the birds noteworthy in the landscape are the white-headed sea eagles and Californian condors (Pseudogryphus californianus).  Humming-birds range through British Columbia and Vancouver Island between mid-April and October.

In the regions about the upper Kootenay River (Eastern British Columbia), before the railway was constructed, there were wild horses, descended, no doubt, from those which had escaped from the Spaniards in New Mexico and California.  They went in large herds, and in the winter when the snow was deep the natives would try to catch them by running them down with relays of fresh horses, or driving them up the mountains into the deepest snow or some narrow pass.  A noose would then be thrown about the exhausted animal, which would be instantly mounted by an Indian and broken immediately to the saddle.  Some of these wild horses were exceedingly swift, well-proportioned, and handsome in shape, but they seldom proved as docile as those born in captivity.  When in a wild condition they would snort so loudly through the nostrils on descrying an enemy that they could be heard at a distance of five hundred yards.